Spiegel Online on Winnenden School Shooting
Today, 17 year-old Tim K., armed with a Baretta, shot and killed fifteen people in and around his former Albertville high school in Winnenden, Germany. He eventually shot himself in a gunfight with police.
The media hype and political debate that ensues now, is missing the most dramatic aspect of this tragedy, I think: No one is born wanting to do this.
At 9:30 this morning, when the first shots were fired, our first imperative is to protect, guard and defend the students, teachers and citizens of Winnenden and Wendlingen, to many of whom Tim K. today brought untold distress, loss of loved ones and for fifteen, senseless death. During these hours, we ask the brave police officers of Baden-Württemberg to comitt the full resources of our strong state to this fight. At great risk for their own health and lives, we task them to stop Tim K. and, if absolutely necessary, to bring him down.
When, around 12:30, we learn that Tim K. is dead and imminent danger is over, we turn to the victims of the tragedy. When we see traumatized fifth graders on TV and learn about casualties, we send psychologists to help cope the trauma, establish hotlines and our representatives express their deepest sympathies with those, whose loved ones perished. Some of us light candles, bring flowers, pray or put commemorative videos on youtube.
But what then?
We think about harsher gun laws, and maybe we need them. We consider metal detectors and heightened school security. We wonder, which effects violent video-games could have.
Captured by the horrendous events of this sad day, shocked by Tim K.’s violence, it is easy to remain in the grip of our primordial, and functional, reflexes, to protect and to defend, to console and to mourn.
But we must not. For the victim’s sake, for Tim K.’s sake, for all our sake, we must move beyond the easy reflexes.
For in the words of fictitious US President Josiah Bartlet, Tim K. “wasn’t born wanting to do this”.
“We’re not doing nearly enough, not nearly enough to teach our children well, and we can do better, and we must do better, and we will do better, and we will start this moment today! They weren’t born wanting to do this.”
Fictitious US President Joshiah Bartlet on the TV show “The West Wing“.
Tim K., like everyone, was not born wanting to kill. And still, he did today, at the age of 17, kill fifteen people which shows that we, as a society, have failed him. When someone at such a young age, grows up to find himself disappointed, hurt, disrespected, without perspective, not loved and ultimately, angry, without us even noticing, all of us, certainly not just the teachers of Albertville high school, have failed.
The school shooting of Winnenden indeed is a call to arms, not just against arms, violent video-games or open schoolhouses. It is a call upon us to ensure that not only, is “no child left behind” in literacy and numeracy, but also, that no child in our schools is left to him- or herself and without hope, attention and affection. In that regard, the Winnenden, Erfurt, Columbine or Virginia Tech massacres are only the few, tragically visible, likely statistically insignificant tips of the icebergs of failure in our schools.
This momentous task surely is one of becoming and perfecting, not of achieving. But still, we must try. And we can, and we know how to: by providing our overworked and sometimes ill-equipped teachers with more colleagues, more resources and more skills. This, amongst other things, will require a lot of money.
This is what I believe we should think, talk and work on in the aftermath of Winnenden, what I wish our chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel had mentioned and what, to my mind surely is the highest respect we can pay to Tim K.’s victims: to use the momentum of this tragedy to devote the resources needed to the one institution where we as a free society and liberal state can shape what becomes of children once they are born into our world, and therefore, our responsibility.
